Apogee GTZ

[migueld]

Yea I agree, the manufacturer makes the money not us; I don't see how the users should have to pay in any way other than with donations.

Here's another idea: Martin could have advertising on his site, similar to the business model of SPCR (www.silentpcreview.com). I think that'd be a pretty viable route if the traffic is decent. Martin has been expanding his site quite a bit, so I think it's possible. People "all over the world" would go to Martin's site, not just XS subscribers. SPCR proves that this model is viable because they have established a platform of trust. I think Martin has that trust and reputation with the community, and he can pull it off.

[kazgirl]

Yea I agree, the manufacturer makes the money not us; I don't see how the users should have to pay in any way other than with donations.

Well thats precisely what you'd be doing with a small subscribtion for access to not just the one review, but all reviews by all reviewers for the entire year, you'd be making a donation, to show your appreciation of the work that rewviewers have put in, of course if you don't want to make such a donation then you don't have to, you can still browse and use the remainder of the forums as usual, just not have access to the reviews that have been submitted... Maybe an annual subscription of $10.00 thats not a lot of money, but if enough users were to subscribe, then that money could be pooled and perhaps a set amount per review could be distrinbuted to a reviewer based on the users scoring of the review submitted, this would be to prevent all and sundry from submitting reviews of no significance, so that only reviews rated by users as meeting a certain quality would receive the set amount from the pool of funds available.

But ssome people aren't interested in reading all reviews about everything but are perhaps more interested in reading a particular review on a particular component..... thats where the idea of a reduced one time only subscription comes in, say if you are considering replacing a specific component and want to read a review on just that....there could be say a $1.00 one time access fee, that permits access to the subscribed area for a 24hr period, or for limited perid of time.... You could see a list of available reviews before deciding, and guage from users ratings of the review based on the score provided by them for that review, before deciding whether or not you think it may be worth reading or not....

You'd be making a small donation towards the pool that is used to reward reviewers for their time spent and effort made in providing us with an unbiased honest evaluation of the product in question, somethng which is not eay to come by these days....

Here's another idea: Martin could have advertising on his site, similar to the business model of SPCR (www.silentpcreview.com). I think that'd be a pretty viable route if the traffic is decent. Martin has been expanding his site quite a bit, so I think it's possible. People "all over the world" would go to Martin's site, not just XS subscribers. SPCR proves that this model is viable because they have established a platform of trust. I think Martin has that trust and reputation with the community, and he can pull it off.

I do understand and agree that yes, if a particular product is rated highly by a reviewer that the manufacturers ultimately profit as a result, however it swings both ways, if a product is rated as being poor by a reviewer then that same product will most likely sit on the shelves...

so if any manufacturer were to consider sponsoring such a reviewer in the manner of advertisments on the users site etc, then of course the impartiality of the review falls under question, which then obviates any benefits of the review in the first place.... by charging or receiving money from any manufacturers for placing an advertisement on their site, the reviewer would essentially be endorsing that manufacturer, so thats clearly not a viable option...!!!

And we're not talking about Martin alone here, there are other reputable and appreciated users who submit their reviews here, some of which may not have sites of their own dedicated to their reviews, so how would they be rewarded....!!!!

How many of you buy a car without first having paid for it to be checked over, or maybe even buying a magazine to read up on the attributes of a boat, if your buying a dog you pay the vet to check it out first etc... you don't even think twice about it, but yet, when it comes to similar for PC parts, you make a huge fuss about the possibility of not being able to access something without having to pay for it in some fashion.....

[orclev]

The problem with the "24 hour access fee" is that there's nothing preventing someone from simply making a copy of every review on the board. Similarly the problem with a subscription board as you pointed out earlier is that the users return on investment is dependent on the reviewers providing timely reviews. Furthermore it then adds overhead on the board maintainers in trying to determine how "useful" particular reviews are so that the revenue can be distributed equitably to all the reviewers.

Because of all these problems, I think a simpler and more straightforward approach is to simply have paid reviews. You can think of it as buying a subscription to a single review. For instance, say Martin posts a review of a new CPU block. XS could put the review up and put a fee for viewing it, say a one time payment of $5 - $50 (whatever everyone decides is fair, would have to be worked out such that it's affordable, but sufficiently compensates the author). Once you've paid to read a review you can come back and read it anytime you want. The money then goes directly to the author of the review (or if it's a joint review to the authors divided as they agree when they post the review). I'm sure even it $5 a review martin could make a killing on here and would be more than amply rewarded for his efforts.

Now, for the problems with this idea. First, Martin is very good about comprehensive reviews, when he posts a review it's usually on a broad swath of products. With a pay per review system the temptation would be to break such all encompassing reviews into multiple reviews, one for each product (not saying martin would do this, I'm just playing devils advocate ). There's also the question then of when posting advice to other members who ask questions, do we respond with bits of knowledge we've obtained from one of the pay reviews, or do we post a link to the review and tell the person to buy it? On the one hand, by reading the review the knowledge has effectively been transfered to us, but on the other hand by redistributing that knowledge for free we're depriving the reviewer of compensation.

[orclev]

For what it's worth I mostly agree with MCoffey, I don't think subscription items are a good idea on here, my previous post was really just analyzing and offering suggestions on other posts. I do feel some sort of standards body such as ISO or UL needs to be established by the manufacturers jointly to provide guarantees of accuracy on reported figures, but that really has nothing to do with us or this board.